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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I've predicted that the DOGE would be highly effective. So far it's exceeded my already high expectations.

Every day, there is the steady drip, drip, drip of taxpayer money being saved. People might scoff at the value of cutting small programs that "only" cost $20 million. But if the average taxpayer pays $500k in taxes over their lifetime, that's 40 people working for their entire lives to give the government that statue of Fauci or whatever else they are doing. Wasting money destroys societal trust.

Not that every fraud and waste is small potatoes. Just today the NIH cut the "tax" that schools like Harvard and Yale are allowed to charge to run their government research. Previously, for example, Harvard grants on average charged 69% above the cost of doing research for institutional overhead. (I think we can all imagine where that ends up). NIH just capped that tax at 15%. This will save $4 billion per year. That's $53 for every one of the 75 million Americans who paid federal income tax last year.

Savings like this are happening every day. So far DOGE has saved $69 billion according to U.S. Debt clock.

But of course they haven't gotten to the biggest sectors of the government yet. They will, and I predict the fraud and waste will be shocking. How much social security is going to dead people, to disability fraudsters, to illegal immigrants, etc...? My guess is a lot. The fraud and waste at USAID was just sitting there for anyone to see, but no one did. Why should other segments of the government be any different?

It's going to get crazy.

Previously, for example, Harvard grants on average charged 69% above the cost of doing research for institutional overhead. (I think we can all imagine where that ends up). NIH just capped that tax at 15%. This will save $4 billion per year. That's $53 for every one of the 75 million Americans who paid federal income tax last year.

If you follow the incentives off a cliff (as happened with health insurance), that means that if they want to retain their $4B cut, that means the new cost of doing research needs to be such that 15% of it is $4B.

If they were willing to just arbitrarily inflate costs, then why would they have stopped at $4B so far?

In any case, 0% is surely best.

You can’t significantly reduce the deficit without cutting “legitimate” Medicare, Medicaid, social security and pork-barrel defense spending, by which I mean spending that is not on the surface fraudulent and is doing ‘what it was intended to do’ by congress (give money to electorally valuable constituencies and create jobs in valuable districts).

Trump apparently just put the DOGE team in charge of auditing defense, so I think your constant drumbeat of "nothing ever happens" may need to be updated just a bit here.

People say this but more and more it is looking like that might not be true. What if there is a lot of waste and fraud in those programs? What if they can cut them without harming grandma? And again, they don’t need to get to a balanced budget. They need to slow the deficit enough to get out of a debt spiral.

What if they can cut them without harming grandma?

How? Medicare likely has lots of fraud on the provider end but social security would have an unusual number of people too old to be alive if there was widespread fraud.

What if 2% is fraud? What if Medicare is 5%-10%? You don’t need a large percentage to be fraud to start having a meaningful impact.

Agreed that investigating social security checks to 120 year olds is likely a net positive. But America having far fewer 120 year olds than countries with known largescale pension fraud problems like Italy and Japan indicates that it's probably a small net positive more than outweighed by population aging.

I'm totally in agreement about medicare. Just think we should temper our expectations.

more and more it is looking like that might not be true

Is it looking that way? Fiscal 'hawks' have been promising for decades that they're going to lower costs without impacting services by cutting fraud and waste and it keeps failing to manifest. What new indicators have surfaced to suggest that This Time Is Different and we really have uncovered the massive fraud that's going to save us hundreds of billions per year? Because penny-wise cuts in the civil service ain't it.

This exactly. Let's put aside the DoD for a second because everyone knows about the waste there.

Many people are nakedly asserting that there is close to zero fraud in SSI and Medicare/Medicaid. I have no idea where this belief comes from. We haven't even looked! USAID was riddled with waste and fraud. It was just sitting in the open for anyone to see. But no one bothered to check until now.

Similarly, the government forgave tens of billions in fraudulent PPI loans.

They let murderers and rapists who were illegal aliens stay in the country when they knew about their crimes and had their addresses.

Would it really be a surprise if they also let illegal aliens, dead people, and scammers collect social security?

They need to slow the deficit enough to get out of a debt spiral.

Yes. If interest rates go down and inflation runs a little hot, then it won't be hard reduce the size of the debt relative to GDP. If DOGE is allowed to work, Trump could end his term having made a significant reduction in debt/GDP. This is not an impossible task.

At least until some judge reverses it all.

Judicial power ultimately relies on popular buy-in. The courts don't have very many divisions. The energy of this moment is so intense that an attempt by courts to stop it would do nothing except damage the legitimacy of the court. A few more "Hawaiian judge" rulings and the administration will begin covertly defying the court. A few more after that, and the administration will openly and brazenly defy the court. This is a civilizational moment and it can't be stopped by some guy in a robe.

The courts don't have very many divisions

This is an anti-civilizational ethos. When you say "fuck the rules, stop me if you can", you can't then complain if people take you up on your invitation. And, uh, the outcome of that is a massive lose-lose.

Gonna suck for you when thenother side wins by 1.5% and starts their "civilizational moment", huh?

They already did. This is the reaction, and we're not even close to it being symmetrical.

No, because that would 5x what is happening now. It snowballs. That's how it works. Like when Trump barely beat Clinton and Wokeness went into hyperdrive. Dems winning by 1.5% and trying to restore Woke hegemony would be the ideal case for the opposition. It's a counter-culture gaining momentum.

There is a genuine "they have made their ruling, now let them enforce it" aspect here.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

Okay so the judge doesn't let you freeze their funds. But you can slow walk the distributions, or turn them over to friendly elements within the departments, or earmark them for long term spending goals so they're still sitting there.

For better or worse, Judges have a limited toolbox to impose their will on other branches, and it is thus sort of easy to guess which ones they'll use and route around those.

IF the legislature decides to play along (big IF) then they can also start defunding courts or reshuffling them and making Judges themselves decide its a good time to retire.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

Man, you are going to be so pissed when you learn about how constructive dismissal works.

The good news is that if the legislature is on board, they can just rewrite the statutes on these departments and then there isn't any intra-executive conflict needed at all. Want to abolish USAID, just have Congress do it in a one-liner. The courts have long since deferred to Congress' authority over the purse strings.

In fact, the only reason the courts have as much power as they do is that Congress doesn't go back through and amend statutes when they are interpreted wrong. Largely because Congress can't be assed to do much of anything, let alone their core function. So much of the dysfunction of the US government is downstream of that power vacuum caused by a Congress that can't or won't legislate.

Man, you are going to be so pissed when you learn about how constructive dismissal works.

I'll show you my Bar card if you can explain which remedies a court can apply in response to a constructive dismissal/termination claim.

It'll save us all some time.

Point is, a Judge can't really force an employer to keep an employee if the employer really wants to let that employee go. They can impose monetary penalties, but in this case they'll probably be paid happily.

Well first would you agree that the elements of constructive termination would be met and we’re just haggling about remedies?

On to remedies, I think front pay could end up being quite a bit.

Under Whittlesey an ambitious plaintiff could argue they would have likely worked till normal retirement and would be entitled to their entire future pay.

Less ambitiously, a plaintiff still does alright. Maybe it’s in the realm of “pay it to go away”

Maybe it’s in the realm of “pay it to go away”

And this is where I think it'd end up if they kept the person on the payroll but just denied them the ability to actually do their job while the situation was worked out.

Okay so a judge says you can't fire them without process. Doesn't stop you from disposing of their work equipment, repurposing their buildings, and basically proceeding along as if they've already been fired.

The judge right now is saying they can't even put them on paid administrative leave. I'm not sure exactly what that means; if they don't put them on leave but also don't assign them any work nor give them access to any government systems, how is that any different? But if it isn't different, can they hold the administration in contempt?

It depends on the judge but it seems like he is focused on the very narrow cases where a aUS employee is abroad and this will cause them immediate harm. The judge isn’t trying to extend it months but weeks to allow them an orderly repatriation to the US.

This seems like an excuse, and if it were the true reason the TRO could have been narrower.

if they don't put them on leave but also don't assign them any work nor give them access to any government systems, how is that any different?

Sounds like the Japanese method of pressuring workers to quit: stick them in a room with nothing to do, wait for them to quit out of boredom.

That kind of power hara(ssment) is illegal in Japan as of two years ago.

Which is nice in many ways but will cause problems. Japanese employee protection is very strong so power hara was often the only way to get dead weight to quit.

That may be why the penalties are relatively light: small fines and public shaming by being put on a public list.

https://www.kojimalaw.jp/en/articles/0003

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220329/p2a/00m/0op/013000c

Sounds like the Japanese method of pressuring workers to quit: stick them in a room with nothing to do, wait for them to quit out of boredom.

I am fairly sure this would not work with the modal federal government worker. But I'm pretty sure a lot of these people have been "working" from home since COVID anyway.

See NYC schools' 'rubber rooms'- it's easier to reassign teachers accused of sexual misconduct to sit in a room and do nothing all day than to adjudicate the case, so they... sit in a room and do nothing all day.

Here's a cracked interview with someone who was in one- https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2564-what-if-your-job-paid-you-to-do-absolutely-nothing.html

Can't you just assign people to work in Alaska or somewhere they don't want to work instead of firing them.

SDNY judge would say no to reassigning them to Alaska.

Why does only one of your sides not hesitate to show up at the houses of judges with a crowbar and zipties?

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From what I heard, they don't let you just sit on your phone or otherwise occupy yourself. You have to stare at the screen where nothing is going on. Otherwise, I doubt it would work on the Japanese either.

What are they going to do if you ignore that and bring a book in your pocket? Fire you?

One thing I've noticed since I entered the workforce is that you can get away with simply ignoring your boss's stupidest orders surprisingly often as long as you don't confront them about it and pretend you made a mistake if you get caught. They don't notice, or they forget, or they give up on enforcement.

If you are a generally productive employee the organization wants to keep you can just ignore the stupidest things your boss asks for until called out about it, in a 'I'll get right on that, it's going to the bottom of the pile so I can remember it' way. If they already want to get rid of you that's what insubordination clauses are for.

You can probably do this if you are producing. If you aren't producing and also not playing the game then things might be difficult unless you are working in a dysfunctional organization.

Somehow I doubt they will just cave to a random Obama appointee from Hawaii, but I'm so glad that you are blackpilled again. For a second it seemed that you were optimistic. It was then that I wondered "has Trump gone too far?"

yeah but many of these people who are fired/quit are going to find other wasteful jobs , and also the severance $ by your same argument adds up to billions of dollars over a lifetime compounded compared to putting the $ in an index fund or something. DOGE will not put a dent in the national debt, but it does not need to. it's an effective rhetorical tool. Trump's successor in 2028 can cite all the cuts under DOGE as progress even if the national debt is still much higher.

Trump's successor in 2028 can cite all the cuts under DOGE as progress even if the national debt is still much higher.

I mean never underestimate the stupidity of the American people etc. etc. but if this really is what they're doing then all this implies is that the Trump administration are charlatans whom the people should hold in utter contempt. If they actually don't even care about the debt what are they even doing? Why are they bothering? Is the only animating principle of the modern American right to indulge their desire to punish the 'establishment' because of whatever chip they have on their shoulder?

I think you're wrong here. I predict DOGE will put a significant dent in the deficit. The fired workers will find other work, dip into savings, rely on their rich relatives, and just consume less. Some may even do something useful with their lives like become a nurse or manage a Panda Express.

But, who knows, maybe this will be the time that betting against Elon works out for the doubters.

Some may even do something useful with their lives like become a nurse or manage a Panda Express.

They absolutely will not do this, those are working class professions. They'll probably become public school admins.

I think you're wrong here. I predict DOGE will put a significant dent in the deficit.

Are you interested in attaching some numbers to your prediction? How much lower do you think the 2025 deficit will be relative to 2024?

Sure! Kalshi has the 2025 deficit reduction estimate at $227 billion, with 33% chance of a $500 billion reduction.

https://kalshi.com/markets/kxgovtcuts/government-budget-cuts

Note: That's just this year. I think the big savings will happen in years 2-4, and this is tilted against DOGE since we still have to digest Biden's last meal.

Nevertheless, despite being very difficult to achieve, I think those predictions are accurate.

For the longer term, instead of deficits, I should predict spending since economic conditions will affect receipts. In 2019, federal spending was roughly $4.4 trillion. In 2024 it was roughly $6.75 trillion, an increase of a staggering 9% per year.

I predict that 2025 spending will be less than in 2024 (80% confidence). And I predict a mid-point of $5.5 trillion in inflation-adjusted spending in 2028.

No, that predicts a reduction in spending, not in the deficit. Whatever savings they do make will no doubt be eliminated and then some by the customary budget-busting Republican tax cut.

maybe this will be the time that betting against Elon works out for the doubters

I wonder about this. Espically because this is a scenario where Elons fate is not even completely in his hands. What happens if DOGE goes as well as it could but it turns out that the GOP figure out in 2028 that MAGA really was just a Trump personality cult and the Dems sweep back into power anyway? Do you think he flees the country? I can't see a world where they don't imprison/Deposses him at least or just kill him.

Dysfunctional infighting between the Texas state government and the federal government that winds up at the supreme court letting Elon off is what happens. Texas may not be a land of enlightened technocrats but it understands perfectly well that sticking up for oligarchs is the best way to get access to their money.

It all depends on how things shake out.The political situation in 2028 is so difficult to predict I do not even bother with the actual prediction just what I think will happen given one of the possible outcomes. I think in the worst case scenario for the conservatives/GOP (IE Trump really is the load bearing figure in the whole movement and it just implodes with him diminished and unable to run again) its very possible the courts are just packed and Texas can't do anything at all. I don't thinks that's likely as I don't think legal action is going to be what happens to Musk but I just don't know.

In practice, democrats getting the kind of majorities that in theory could pack the courts requires getting tons of moderates who would shy away from court packing elected. Now democrats can appoint super partisan judges, but it takes time for the churn to get them the kinds of majorities which allow unbridled lawfare against parties with powerful protectors.

I agree with you 100% I don't think the lawfare angle is likely against someone as powerful and wealthy as Musk. I don't think it would pan out and if it did it would have years and could be undone. I think for a lot of reasons if the Dems come back into power in a big way the "plane crash" , "heart attack" and "car accident" angles are far more likely.

I don’t think Musk really cares that much about that given projection of the future since he considers it probable that the singularity will happen in this term, at least. He’s probably more inclined to believe that Sama beats him to the punch and disassembles his atoms than simply being imprisoned by the next blob-appointed president.

Then it doesn’t really make much sense what he is doing (eg why care about the budget or defanging the bureaucracy if skynet will be here in two years).

Because a better starting point allows the slack to be pulled quicker if you’re not expecting a super-hard takeoff? Although I’m not sure what Musk believes with regard to that.

If you get a singularity soon, then this is all noise.

Elon seems far less on board with the ultra-fast ASI timeline than Sam or the Anthropic guys or even the Deepmind guys and Zuck.

I've had the same thought. I'd say there's a large chance (maybe 15%) that he gets assassinated in the next 4 years. He's taken billions of dollars out of the mouths of extremely corrupt, powerful people. It makes what Epstein did look like child's play. And he hasn't even started with the the DoD yet.

If a Republican doesn't win in 2028, he is toast. And I think it's going to be tough for them. Trump is sui-generis. No one can speak to the rubes like he can.

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

Aren't we all?

Musk is more likely to die in jail than in Mars.

I have said before and believe more so now that him going to jail is extremely unlikely. I think if the Dems rally and reorganize enough to take advantage of Trump being gone and actually win in 2028, then their new leadership would be smart enough to aim for the head with regards to Elon and not risk just imprisoning him.

Musk is a difficult target- this isn't joe schmo clinton associate here.

Elon is both not very good as assessing risk to his person and a very loud public figure. Assassinating him would not be very difficult if you had control of the government and a federal apparatus that supports his death.

And what do you think the result of such an action would be?

Musk gets a page or two in the history books along with thousands of other people across countries and time periods who played the game of thrones, lost and died.

Isn't putting him jail better than killing him since it's a more explicit demonstration of power?

Or is the risk that he would get pardoned and go for another cycle? To prevent that, they might go for the suicide in prison route or torture him via solitary confinement like they did to Bradley Manning and some of the J6 prisoners.

Or is the risk that he would get pardoned

Bingo! Yeah I think history is not really kind to people in the modern era that tried to exile people vs just killing them.

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